Dear Seeker, In these extraordinary, perilous times let us call upon the pervasive, penetrating Presence, of the recreative Spirit of Truth who is peace, wholeness, healing deeper and wider than division, destruction, fear and fanaticism.
I offer this ancient invocation, reframed for our time. Let this intention resound beyond the walls of your heart as you set this Spirit loose to breathe over the face of our fractured, fear-filled nation.
An ancient blessing renewed, for all who are heart-sore, worried or wondering at this turning of turning:
Deep Peace of the running wave, and the cleansing of the waters. Deep Peace of the flowing air, and the clearing of the skies. Deep Peace of the soft rain, and the shelter of friendship. Deep Peace of shining stars, and the memory of timeless beginnings. Deep Peace of the quiet earth, and the kinship of all creatures. Deep Peace of the gentle night, and the warm hearth of family. Deep Peace of the ancient stones, and the tenacity of life. Deep Peace of the heart of Mary, and the tender touch of every mother. Deep Peace of the Christ child, and the Holy One guised as enemy and kin. Deep Peace of our merciful Maker, and the Spirit who makes us one. To the terrors of the night, and the troubles of your day, Deep Peace. Celtic Traditional (Adapted)
By the tenderest mercy of our Maker, dawn from on high will break over us, to enlighten all who sit in death’s dark shadow, and guide our feet back to the ways of peace.
Luke 1:78-79
Living below the flight path of an air-freight world hub
invites regular rumbled interruptions that shred nerves, rattle windows, and interfere with conversations, as well as household electronics.
In early morning, at eventide and into dead of night, our neighborhood is rent with whining turbines
that defy gravity as they strain to launch or land monstrous metal birds, miraculously uplifted by invisible airy currents.
In pairs they arrive or depart, roaring and tearing at the cloudy blue as speedily they rise or slowly descend.
Low-flying and laden with treasures and trinkets, they bear necessities, along with niceties from ports unknown.
Like those harbor docklands of old, our city is now a sky port with an army of shippers and handlers
who toil day and night to manipulate mountains of the stuff that stuffs our overfilled lives.
And in the frenzied season of buying and gifting, this frequent freight flying reaches fevered pace.
The light shines in the darkness, and darkness did not overcome it.
John1:5
These cold, stark days, I sit on my porch and skyward stare, as wordless breath mists chill air.
I wait and I watch blinking white underbellies, wheels down, pass low over trees and rooves.
No longer greeted by impatient frustration and a rumbling undercurrent of worried resentment,
these days, this rattling roar resounds like death-defying thunder, announcing from the heavens that hope is on the wing.
For cargo planes, now turned angelic, are also pregnant with the possibility of new liquid life.
In defiance of the typical detritus of seasonal sentimentality, these magnificent machines bear life-saving serum in their bellies.
So hope for a great sea change On the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.
Seamus Heaney
Each mechanical messenger I greet like Gabriel or Hermes, with a hopeful nod and the glimmer of a smile.
I call to mind our fearful, fragmented, beleaguered human family, brought low by viral load.
How long-awaited, this clear liquid life, to shatter the shadow of pandemic that once again, we might breathe easy.
But not quite yet! For we are still plagued by pride, and hubris humiliates us.
Disease also defines us, as crisis unmasks systemic inequities, along with vanities and vulnerabilities.
Pandemic pleads for new self-understanding; a world repatterned around care for creatures and health care for humankind.
Plague will not leave us until we refuse to leave any member of our human family behind.
Historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
Arundhati Roy
May the hope that gilds the horizon bring enlightenment, chase away cruelty and heal hearts that mourn the cruel cost of living.
Wherever is your treasure, there too will be your heart.
Matthew 6:21
Seeker, When has life required courage; living from your core?
There is so much we’ll never know, far less we understand, till wisdom in unknowing extends her guiding hand.
Thus, the universal scope of our ignorance, does not dim the tiny spark of comprehension.
A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit I shall put within you.
Ezekiel 36:26
One thing we know— no matter how oblivious we appear— there is a reliable rhythm to everything:
a flow and cycle of receive and release, a give and take in constant exchange. Whatever we put out, in the end, comes back.
Whether out of sync or sorts, heaving and harried, drowsy and distracted, distressed or disconnected,
we can recalibrate the measure of each moment to the pulse of life.
No mystic secret needed, nor discipline austere, just a heart-felt intention to be in unison.
We need only place a hand upon that center of ache and desire, to sense the throbbing tempo at our core.
When in secret I was shaped, my frame was not hidden from You.
Psalm 139:15
Weeks after conception a tiny pump begins to pulse and push.
Uninterrupted, this regularity matches the meter of each breath, till inevitably life leaves us.
To feel life-force coursing through us, evokes awe— with its tiny twinge of fear.
How many beats has your precious heart registered? How many skipped? How many remain? So fragile a force that that safeguards your life.
All complex creatures have hearts and each human has a core, a chamber of secret longings, and so much more.
Listen carefully to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.
Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict
Consider trillions of beating hearts in this synchronous second, all working tirelessly to stay alive, somehow all connected.
The hearts of creatures, tiny and tremendous, made in the likeness.
Whether in gated communities and ghettos, forests, fields and factories, we all share a tenuous connection to aliveness:
a heart where every wound, wonder, worry and woe, is oxygenated, nourished and healed.
Such awesome awareness, this incalculable, incessant beating across a pearlescent pebble, spinning in the dark.
Put a gentle palm upon the chest, and sense the Sacred at the heart of it all.
In its quiet rhythms, behold infinite-intimacy with every beating being.
Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel
The pathway to heartfelt understanding (standing under) is humility.
And wonder ripens into awe when hearts are humbled by such smallness in the face of the infinite.
Give me a pure heart—that I may see Thee, A humble heart—that I may hear Thee, A heart of love – that I may serve Thee, A heart of faith—that I may abide in Thee.
The heart of this nation has grown calloused, their ears are hard of hearing and they have shut their eyes; so they might not look with their eyes, listen with their ears, understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.
Matthew 13:15
[Beneath the menacing pulse of helicopters, troop carrier convoys command empty downtown streets, and armored police columns cordon crosswalks
while armed militias posture before protestors. Now, my adopted hometown heaves under the raw realization
that justice, who long ago lost her blindfold, sees only in black and white.
Under curfew, behind barred doors, in flickering candlelight we wait, watch, worry, as we listen to sirens and pray for peace even without justice.
Like so many families in other darkened cities, distant countries, far-off times and places, we wonder: How did it come to this and where do we go from here? Louisville, Kentucky; September 24, 2020]
Seeker, What role does your faith play when some lives and deaths seem to matter less than others?
When curiosity and desire for conquest carried our European ancestors to these shores their cultural cargo included death dealing disease, weaponry, and a divine dispensation to control natives and colonize nature.
With the cross came the crown.
Papal declarations permitted the exploitation of human communities and consigned them to carve out gold and silver from the earth to gild crucifixes and candlesticks in far flung cathedrals.
With the crown came chains.
Named and claimed for the distant monarchs of Christendom, verdant wilderness was tamed and turned to cultivation. New plantation populations were needed to raise cotton, sugar, tobacco; and raise profits.
With chains came commercial opportunity.
As African families were abducted, shackled, shipped, sold into slavery, more moral manipulations permitted prelates, preachers and presidents to impose divinely ordained hierarchy and hegemony; a travesty to cleave God’s family; making some subservient and others supreme.
With commercial exploitation came crucifixion.
Our faith story in these lands remains insinuated in the filaments of this trifurcated root: genocide, nature desecration and slavery. Still, ‘Cristo Negro’ cries out breathless from the cross and we remain shackled to a shameful legacy of privilege and supremacy.
With emancipation comes reckoning
How do faithful people account for participation in racial sin; make amends, affect repair?
The Examen – listening, looking, learning— predicates penance. Confession precedes forgiveness. Truth-telling comes before reconciliation. Reconciliation demands restitution. Restoration requires reparation.
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.
Matthew 13:16-17
May we recover courage and shake off the shackles of crown, commerce and cultural crucifixion, to freely enter together the undiscovered country where we black, brown, indigenous and immigrant people are all cherished.
When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression, and war.
